Betty Woodman. Kimono Vases

Betty Woodman, His/Hers Vases, Young Lovers, 2002. Glazed earthenware, epoxy resin, lacquer, and paint, 31 x 64 x 10 inches.
sculpted and painted pieces of complimentary earthenware
Betty Woodman, His/Hers Vases, Young Lovers, 2002. Glazed earthenware, epoxy resin, lacquer, and paint, 31 x 64 x 10 inches. San José Museum of Art. Gift of the Lipman Family Foundation, 2005.08 a–b. Photo by Douglas Sandberg.
 

Betty Woodman alternated between functional and expressive work, allowing ideas from one practice to flow into the other. For example, looking at a shelf lined with a series of identical clay pitchers in her studio led her to produce an imaginative series of pitchers melded together as if one continuous gestural form. Serial production also compelled Woodman to think about the relationship between objects, as in triptych and diptych works like the “Kimono Vases,” in which the vases give sharply outlined form to the negative space between the objects.